


Capture Any Keep

by motleystarshine



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Heraht Adaar - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:57:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5860609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motleystarshine/pseuds/motleystarshine





	1. Chapter 1

There is something about her, sitting tall in the saddle as she rides out with the troops, that tightens his leathers in the best way possible. The swagger of her long legs as she strides around, the sway of the thick leather of her jacket against her thighs, and the swing of her vambraces flashing in the sunlight are all little reminders of the way she is when they are alone. It calls to mind the hours in which she is not Inquisitor Adaar, when she is his Heraht. The flash of the buckles of her boots remind him of the length of her shins and the way his feet fit against them when she cuddles up against his back. The stretch of cold metal scales glinting down her arms reminds him of the warm feeling of her arm around his middle, the way that the sheets tug against their thighs.  
  
Every aspect of her is lovely to him in ways he did not expect.  
  
The horns, for instance. After what the Qunari did to Kirkwall he never expected to find those attractive, but the curve of hers is delicate.  
  
The way her hands and face and neck are browner than the rest of her - a muddy gray instead of the silver beneath her clothes - speaks of hard work and of competence.  
  
She knows he watches her, keeps her chin high and her back straight and tall when he’s in eyesight. Her expression is often empty of her intent, she bears a serene countenance before the Inquisition, but her lips quirk, just a little, when she knows she has caught his attention.  
  
When she is proud of him that little quirk spreads into a beautiful smile. It is the very sun coming through the clouds when she turns that smile on him.  
  
Cullen is smitten with his silver-skinned darling, anxious for her time, for her smiles, for her embraces.  
  
He knows the Inquisition takes priority, but he finds comfort in the knowledge that there is no Inquisition without it’s Inquisitor, and so even his diligence at work is in her service. That makes him work harder, pushing through the complaints of his withdrawal to see to the army and order the guards and arrange the patrols. He is vigilant for his Inquisitor.  
  
Even his enthusiasm for service to her cannot make him enthusiastic to receive word that he is summoned to Sahrnia. It is two days travel in gusting snow for heaping drifts, but when he arrives to see the red lyrium broken through to daylight and the dazed workers sitting, emaciated, in the broken down village, he knows why he was called. He sets the troops to work immediately, sending for more men, more food, more blankets. Trees are chopped and ice melted for water and boards stretched over holes in roofs and Cullen does not see the blond Chevalier hovering at the edge of town, staring with wide eyes to see the Inquisition crawling over every inch of the town like so many ants building a nest.  
  
“You must be Commander Cullen,” a man’s voice interrupts.  
  
Cullen looks up in annoyance to find a sharply dressed blond man who has the look of someone expensive in need of a bath. The man lifts blond brows, and Cullen nods and frowns, confused by the interruption.  
  
“The Inquisitor sent me down to lead you up.”  
  
The man sounds lost, somehow confused. Cullen tries not to be angry at the man, but fails until Knight-Captain Rylen steps up and asks for the rest of their orders. Satisfied that the village will be properly taken care of, Cullen mounts his horse and heads up the frigid slopes to…  
  
Sahrnia is a strange, red-mottled snow-scape, almost disfigured by the red lyrium, and the carcass of a Keep is just as bad as the tower that guards it.  
  
Her companions are camped in a little subterranean room that’s been dug out, one with a fireplace that’s been unblocked. The dwarf is telling stories and the Warden guffawing at them while the apostate tries very hard not to laugh. It is there that the blond man leaves him, waving him on to the path ahead, giving some vague set of instructions involving lefts and rights and broken staircases.  
  
It doesn’t make any sense.  
  
Years stretch between when Cullen was last a tracker, but he picks his way through the snow on his own, easily following a path tamped down from repeated crossings. He comes at last to another roofed space, nothing more than the draft storage room from the height of the Keep, but the only area with a working fireplace above ground. The sides have been walled off with hastily put up boards, the gaps insulated by a mismatch of fabric that seems to be the bloodied uniform of the Venatori that died here, and there is a horse already tethered inside. Cullen dismounts and brings his horse in too, pleased to find there is a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a smirking Inquisitor standing before it.  
  
“Took you long enough,” she says, and he sees that she is not wearing her armor, but leather pants and a tunic beneath the coat that he often dreams of.  
  
There is a nest of blankets - clean ones - by the fireside, tucked against the corner, and she is barefoot. He settles his horse and closes the plank-door behind him. “The village is a ruin. I thought that was why you’d summoned me.”  
  
“Of course that’s why the Inquisitor summoned her Commander,” she says. And then he hears the sound of leather falling to the floor - one of his favorite sounds in rooms with her - and turns to find her down to her tunic and breeches, hands on her hips with that smirk, that beloved little smirk that he would go to war for gladly. “But I summoned you for another reason.”  
  
He crosses to her, and they are not Inquisitor or Herald and Commander or Knight-Captain. They are he and her, she and him in a tangle of arms and a press of lips before the fire. He backs her into the wall, and she laughs into his mouth and asks, “Do you like the Keep I captured for you?”  
  
“F-for me?”  
  
Her mouth covers his again, and her leg slips between his and his brain stops. “Just for you,” she breathes into his mouth.  
  
Small gifts he has gotten before - little things like the sweets at Winter’s End, the coin from his brother, and that Maker-be-damned wooden figurine of Andraste his mother insisted he have when he’d longed for it in the market when he was eight - but this is larger than he’s ever thought of being a gift.  
  
“What-?” he manages, knowing his chestplate is cold against her by the way she shivers. He hurries to unlatch it.  
  
“I thought of you when the demon fell,” she confides, tugging his tunic free. “Of what you’d say when I gave this to you.”  
  
“It’s the Inquisition’s.”  
  
“I am the Inquisitor, and you are my Commander,” she purrs against his neck, an old game between them that has him pinning her hands to the wall automatically. “I may bestow as I wish.”  
  
“You’re giving me a Keep.”  
  
His mail shirt she reaches for, but he keeps her wrists.

“I thought you would feel a bit more…” she begins, and there is the uncertainty left in her, the beautiful girl rejected by others just as he had done, those who never took the chance to figure out what makes her special. He curses himself for that stupidity, for bringing that lost look to her face, and takes it away with his lips on hers.  
  
“For me?” he asks in a low voice.  
  
“For _you,”_ she affirms, back to that tall-in-the-saddle, swagger-walking goddess that he is the champion of, and she turns them  and has him against the wall.  
  
He feels the fire of her pressing against him, wraps his arms around her and gets a knee up to her hip. The first few times this had been awkward, but by now it is just one more way that the two of them fit together, and in his mail shirt he can feel the soft weight of her against him.  
  
They progress through kisses and touching, and his armor and his belt all fall away, and she’s on her knees beneath him, half-unwrapped as he is before the fire, until he can take no more without giving and he mounts her in the abandoned ale room. She cries out his name to the fire and the horses, and they slump together in the nest she thought to make of blankets.  
  
She shifts them, arranges them with tired arms until she can curl her arms around him and her warmth seeps into him. “I miss your skin,” she complains against his cheek.  
  
“Next time… get me one where it’s warmer.”  
  


*


	2. Chapter 2

In Crestwood, Caer Bronach is indeed warmer, so there is no need of the false, bloody walls, but he would not notice if it was on fire. She has been gone two months, and every report pitting her against the undead and the wyvern and the bloody dragon stopped his heart, and every missive he had sent out had a code of his love for her in it.

 

Though he expects her to lay the dragonslaying at his feet as well, having passed the skull dragged into the gate room, she kisses him and says, “I did that for me,” just as she goes to her knees beneath the Inquisition standard and takes him into her mouth like she wants to swallow him whole.

 

“Somewhere drier,” he says, thrusting into her mouth as she keeps her arms wrapped around his waist. He spills down her throat and she swallows that down with the same enthusiasm she had swallowed his cock.

 

Once the trembling has stopped, she tugs his breeches back up and draws him back towards the part of the Caer where there is roof. Up a flight of stairs, into a room that is somehow still damp with all the rain of Crestwood, and he unwraps her from her armor to find her as wet as the rain-soaked battlements. He tosses his gloves aside, shedding his breastplate, and fingers her to completion with his mouth suckling one of her breasts while he recovers from his release.

 

She loses herself in the pleasure of it.

 

Then they are both warmed up and still wanting.

 

He has her against the door of the locked room at the top of the stairs, and they both call out their release like they are dying.

 

Her companions never say a word, though Varric smirks and promises to leave their little celebrations out of the novel, and Blackwall casts envious eyes on him.

 

*


	3. Chapter 3

In the Western Approach there is a ghost of a Keep made of hot stones in bitter air. He has her against a battlement with her legs spread wide for his thrusting hips. She wraps her arms around him, her legs around him, and he takes her weight, keeping angled back and a desperate grip on her. It is hard to find release worrying that the stone will drop her precious body to the rocks below, but she has no problem. Once she is spent, he slumps against her, trembling and hard.

 

As she comes back to herself, she realizes.

 

“Cullen-”

 

“The blasted stone,” he grumbles. “The whole place is falling apart,” he tightens his grip on her. “If you-”

 

“I’m a sturdy one, Commander,” she says, kissing his forehead. Then her lips quirk in a smile. “Are you?”

 

He has barely a moment to say yes, of course he is, before she has tackled him to the sandy floor beneath him, which is at least solid, and he is concerned only by the clench and flex of her thighs as she rides him to his release with ardent focus.

 

The heat is everywhere, baked into the stones and in the aftertaste on the air, and though she seems perked up, he flaggers in it. She draws him up, back towards a shaded wall, and they kiss languidly. “You’re getting sunburned,” she chuckles.

 

“Somewhere greener, then,” he asks, twining his arms around her, caring only for her warmth.

 

*


	4. Chapter 4

At last in the Emerald Graves there is a Chateau. It is warm, it is dry, and there is enough green to satisfy even an elf. It is haunted, and they are not alone. She can’t, she says, for the spirits.

 

So he does instead, spreading her and pressing his tongue into all the places he’d put himself if only she’d consent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(She does consent, twice. First in a dusty bed by a flickering fire, and then again bent forward over the grand balcony. She comes with a wail so loud that it sets birds to flight, and he spends in her harder than he has since his first accidental overdose of lyrium when he was eighteen.)

 

*


	5. Chapter 5

It is distant, at times, when he cannot feel her breath on his ear as she whispers some joke, or the brush of her knuckles against his before their hands catch. There is so much he would like to do with her - to read with her in bed and with the door shut, to feed her by hand so he could feel her lips against his skin - that the time and distance cannot give them. So they have this for the two of them - her presents to him, and his favor given back to her.

 

And someday there will be less riding out, less striding the courtyard with her sword over her shoulder, less need for an army and-

 

And what?

 

Are the pair of them not made for war? Would she still want him without the sword he carries, when he is just aging muscle and shaking hands?

 

_Maker_ , when it is the two of them and his bad dreams, what will they be?

 

She rides back into Skyhold, head held high in triumph and his doubts stab at him.

 

If she sees it in him, she gives no sign as she swings down from the saddle. The Inquisition crowds around, her eager followers taking the reins from her horse and the sword that she shrugs up out of its baldric. His throat goes dry as her eyes steal away to him, even as she nods and laughs at others.

 

Cullen retreats to his office, unable to watch with the doubt eating away at the flood of warmth her very presence lights in his chest. There is business to do, her army to run, her troops to see to-

 

He is not a coward for fulfilling his duties.

 

(That is not the first time he has had to tell himself so.)

 

He does not see her again until later, at mealtime. He did not think to bring something to his tower, and must forage below. If he does not leave his rooms, Cassandra or Josephine or Leliana will find a way to draw him out,  and it is not that he does not wish to see his Inquisitor, but that he fears to lose her to the future.

 

She is there, leaned back against her seat, and her companions are arrayed around her. There are no nobles in the hall, no dignitaries to impress, and though there are swords and shields and daggers and bows, they are all placed haphazardly aside. Varric is telling some story that has the others chuckling, or - no. Varric is asking some question of her, and the others all seem hooked on the answer.

 

As he comes into the room, she looks at him, and smiles that dazzling smile of hers, and he freezes as though snared by it.

 

“You should ask the Commander,” she says, “he’s the one who takes care of them all for me.”

 

The eyes are fixed on him now, and he cannot leave without causing some scene that will be the teasing of him for a month. The dwarf is quickest to speak up, before Cullen can give any denial, and asks, “We’re dying to know how you manage to _fill_ all the Keeps she keeps capturing.”

 

“The Inquisition has-”

 

“Come off it, _little man_ ,” the Iron Bull chortles, “you know what he means.”

 

“I’ve had practice,” Cullen says. The words slip free before he can stop them, and he hates that he-

 

“Has he, your Inquisitorialness?” the dwarf asks, and all her companions turn their eyes back to her.

 

In the candlelight he can see the flush of her cheeks, but only because he knows to look for it. She tips her head back, baring her throat, and smiles like a cat with a dish of cream, but says no words.

 

Her friends all take that as her answer. The Iron Bull looks back to Cullen, giving a respectful nod. Sera makes a face and sips from her mug deeply. Varric laughs - and likely he knew his own answer anyway. Cole seems confused, but Solas puts a hand to his shoulder to quiet him. Vivienne gives Cullen the longest look she has since they were introduced, and Dorian undresses him with his eyes. Blackwall presses his lips together, but gives Cullen a respectful nod.

 

“At least they are well maintained,” Cassandra says, unable to hide the scarlet flush of her cheeks as she stares down at her meal.

 

The others laugh merrily, and the awkward moment passes. Cullen finds his meal from the servants, and as he turns to find a table, a spot has opened up amidst the knot of adventurers. It would be folly not to take it, and it is safe enough here in the small hall with only Leliana’s upper agents and his own captains.

 

The seat beside her is well won, he thinks, but his heart remains troubled.

 

The stories they tell soothe him, and by the end of his meal - they all having finished before seem to have stayed with her as she stayed with him - the others drift off, muttering their plans for the evening. It is she and him, and the candles are low.

 

Her arm found the back of his chair at some point, and like magic the hall has all but emptied. She presses her forehead to his temple, affectionately, and says in his ear, “Come upstairs?”

 

He has no reason to deny her, and they head up to her rooms through the empty halls.

 

She closes the door behind them, shutting out the Inquisition and the world beyond, and the fiercest part of her swagger comes off, and she smiles at him the same shy smile from that first kiss on the battlements - the one he had made such a mess of.

 

“This is the only Keep we haven’t claimed,” she says, stepping into his space.

 

His doubt fades as she leans down to kiss him, and his senses are filled with her.

 

Her clever hands are between them, tugging at the folds of his mantle and tunic, but he catches them, breathing heavily into her mouth, “Not that way. Not tonight.”

 

She tugs at his wrists once, but threads their fingers together and nods when he keeps hold of them.

 

“The bed,” he says, pulling her.

 

She follows, willingly. She presses up against him, curling her arms around his neck and kissing behind his ear, and it’s all he can do not to strip her at the waist and bend her over the end of the broad bed.

 

But no.

 

“We’ve never any time,” Cullen says between kisses, reminding himself that they have both missed the skin of each other, reminding himself that not every coupling need be a quick tryst stolen between long absences. He tugs at her buttoned collar. “Tonight is different. Tonight I want to feel your skin on mine.”

 

She nods, helping with the damned buttons, and together they free her torso from the soft leather. He strips his armor, dropping it into a heap on the rug, and they fall together to her bed.

 

It has been most of their relationship since they last had this. Since his stomach pressed to hers, since his lips found her breasts, since he traced the scars on her with worried fingertips. Her legs around him are warm and strong, and the silver of her is a sharp contrast to the paleness of him. He works his way down her body with kisses, mapping the lines of her, and she trembles at the attention, unused to this closeness. She grunts beneath him as his kisses travel up the inside of her leg. He puts his arms around her waist and his mouth finds the warmest wettest part of her. Her breath hitches as she shatters in his arms to those most intimate kisses. He frees one hand to reach out for hers, and she grips it tightly, winding their fingers together.

 

He eases back, licking his lips to chase the taste of her, and enjoys the sight of her flushed and spent beneath him. The splay of her thighs stiffens his cock and he grits his teeth at the vision beneath him - his woman, so wrecked for him. She tugs on his hand, and he stretches out on top of her. It has been too long since this _closeness_ , and her hand slips between them to guide him inside her. He rides her slowly, enjoying all the pliant muscles of her and the soft sighs of pleasure. He takes his sweet, sweet time.

 

She shivers and shakes, whimpering his name. Against her like this, joined with her, his lips cannot reach hers. So instead he kisses her collar bone, her chest, and latches onto one of her breasts. Her skin tastes faintly of sweat, and he relishes it on his tongue. Her scent catches in his nose, the lavender she prefers on her skin and her sheets, but beneath that the leather and iron scent of his beautiful warrior.

 

When he spends in her, she joins him, crying out in a call that echoes his name up into the rafters.

 

He slumps against her, and her arms tangle around him.

 

In the emptiness of his thoughts, a dark voice whispers, _It cannot always be like this._

 

Her voice is hoarse from crying out, but it sounds almost like a purr as she says, “You went away, when I rode in. Usually you stay to watch me. To greet me. If something is wrong-”

 

“This will all end some day,” he says without thinking. She tenses beneath him, he has spoken rashly, unforgivably. “The Inquisition,” he hurries to add. “I… will not want to move on, not from you. I never thought of what that would mean, before.”

 

“You think of that?” she asks, her worn out voice slow and careful.

 

“Of being with you,” he acknowledges, “constantly.”

 

She softens beneath him, and her arms surround him and her lips press to his. He basks in her attention, soaks it into every shadowed corner of his mind, and groans softly when her hand sweeps down his back and tugs him further up by a firm grip on his ass.

 

“You think of me?” she asks in that too-young voice that steals his breath and makes him worry over the ways he has taken her and wonder how much of her innocence was lost to his tongue and cock.

 

“Constantly,” Cullen repeats, lowering his lips to her cheek and then her neck. “You fill the spaces between my thoughts most pleasantly.”

 

Heraht’s arms tighten around him and she holds him to her tightly.

 

It occurs to Cullen that he has never told her the depths of his affection for her.

 

“I have never felt this way for anyone,” he says, shifting so that he can look her in the eye.

 

Her cheeks flush in a way he’s never expected from her, and she captures his lips with hers the way she’s captured the keeps that she lays at his feet.

 

“I love you,” she says in her smooth voice, stealing his words before he can make them plain.

 

His chest feels tight, a warm feeling of contentment spreading through him. “And I you,” he breathes out before taking her lips.


End file.
